Learning Chord Melody Guitar

I'm learning Jazz Guitar - here's what I've found so far.

About the Site

I am a classical guitar student of modest guitar and musical
skills. Recently I started exploring Chord Melody playing and Jazz
guitar in general and I am overwhelmed by the volume of information
available. There are tons of great resources for learning various
aspects of Jazz theory and technique - and I've got way too many
browser tabs open - so this site will be my continuing mind map of the
material I'm exploring. Hopefully it will be interesting to the
internet passer-by as well.

Jazz Guitar Resources

As I run across resources I'll post links here - mostly for
tracking my progress and for my own future learning. So far I've been
struck by the difference between the Jazz material I've encountered
and the Rock/Blues material I've studied: many rock or blues lessons
teach a single technique - maybe a lick, maybe a sweep or a pull-off
or a harmonic. They may spend 10 minutes minutely examining the
mechanics of the technique - pick angle, hand placement, picking
direction, etc - and then it may take my an hour or two of practice to
bring the technique up to speed. Frequently the lessons assume
absolute beginner status - telling you the names of the notes and what
fret positions to finger and showing you in detail exactly what's
happening in picking and fretting hands.

In contrast Jazz instruction seems to have a higher barrier to
entry. It frequently seems denser, more theoretical and requires a
much greater investment of time to apply - something like
"modification x to chord y makes it a substitution for chord z in some
contexts - here are three different grips - work them out across all
twelve keys in and four different positions..." One concept can lead
to 10 or 20 hours of work to understand how to apply and work out all
the variations. Seriously - look
at this
article about Pat Martino for an
example of this sort of thing.

Or for another example - I'm starting Robert
Conti's
book/dvd Chord
Melody Assembly Line. It's a great intro to Chord Melody as it is
a very straightforward "follow the instructions" kind of book. But if
you took out the explanations and the glossary it could be condensed
to about 3 double-sided pages with the grips he uses and the examples
to harmonize. Of course that's enough material to keep me busy for six
months!

Keep at it!

I guess my point is that the novice to Jazz guitar (that's me)
shouldn't be discouraged by the denseness of the lessons or the depth
of the material. I read the Martino essay above, but I don't
understand it yet. That's ok - I'll work through it and revisit it in
a few months. In the meantime - there's lots more to explore.